Maserati’s Stoffel Vandoorne and Nissan’s Oliver Rowland emerged as the big winners as the Tokyo E-Prix served up two very different races.
Mahindra Racing held on to third place in the teams’ championship, but it was a round of missed opportunities for the Indian team. Despite being in podium contention for both races, it scored just eight points.
- Vandoorne wins Race 1, ahead of Rowland and Barnard
- Rowland wins Race 2, ahead of Wehrlein and Ticktum
Maserati aces strategy
Vandoorne scores first Formula E win in three years
With qualifying cancelled due to heavy rain, the drivers’ Free Practice 2 times set the grid for the first race. Polesitter and championship leader Rowland held on to the lead initially. But a red flag stoppage caused by Maximilian Guenther’s car stopping on track flipped the script.
Vandoorne was the only driver to have taken his Pit Boost fast-charging stop at the time. Anticipating a mid-race stoppage due to the difficult weather, Maserati was running an alternate strategy, with Vandoorne burning through his energy early on. It turned out to be a masterstroke, handing Vandoorne the lead as the rest of the field pitted for the mandatory Pit Boost stop.
“I forgot what it feels like to win! It feels weird because it’s a little bit unexpected, but at the same time, I knew it was 100 percent possible,” said Vandoorne, who scored his first race win since Monaco 2022.
“We had a very bold strategy: to spend so much energy in the beginning to open our pit window very early, being able to be first into the pit lane and offset ourselves from the rest, which we managed to do. I love it when a plan comes really into play, every little thing that you discuss before the race actually happens. It’s very rare that it comes together like that in Formula E, but today was one of those days.”
Rowland settled for second place, followed by McLaren’s Taylor Barnard.
Nissan wins on home soil
Rowland extends Formula E championship lead
Rowland bounced back in the second race, which was held in dry conditions. He slipped to P6 as he jumped for Attack Mode later than his rivals. But he timed his second Attack Mode deployment just right and used the added power to move up to P2, behind race leader Pascal Wehrlein.
The Nissan driver still had 40 seconds of Attack Mode remaining when Wehrlein ran out of his boost. A tense wheel-to-wheel battle followed, with Rowland ultimately emerging on top. Dan Ticktum finished third, securing his first-ever podium finish in Formula E.
Frustrating round for Mahindra Racing
Indian team holds on to third place overall
Mahindra Racing’s call to focus on one-lap performance in Free Practice 2 paid dividends since qualifying got cancelled, placing Edoardo Mortara second on the grid for the race start, with teammate Nyck de Vries in fifth place.
Issues with Attack Mode activation denied Mortara a podium finish, but he was able to salvage a P6 result, scoring the team’s only points over the weekend. De Vries finished P8 on track but was handed a 5-second time penalty for contact with Mitch Evans, which dropped him to P11.
In the second race, Mortara was once again in podium contention. But he got hit with a 5-second penalty for an encounter with Barnard and ended up in P12. Having picked up damage early on, de Vries opted to conserve energy, hoping for a Safety Car intervention. The Safety Car did come out with three laps to go, but it was too late, and de Vries could only finish P15.
Reflecting on the round, Mahindra Racing CEO and team principal Frederic Bertrand said, “We have had incredibly strong form all season, but this is still a team and a car which are developing and growing together. Inevitably, there will be weekends where we have learnings to take away, but for me, this is a positive – you learn more from the tough times than success, as we showed all of last season.”
Nevertheless, Bertrand added that there were “plenty of positives” for the team at Tokyo, as they scored points and are still third in the World Championship, “ahead of some huge global manufacturer brands, which, compared to this time last year, is a huge step forward. It’s one small setback, but the journey goes on.”
2025 Formula E championship standings
Having picked up his fourth win of the season, Rowland now holds a 77-point lead over Wehrlein in the championship. Wehrlein’s Porsche teammate Antonio Felix da Costa is third, 11 points behind him.
In the teams’ championship, Nissan leads the way with a 15-point advantage over Porsche. There’s a big gap to third place, with Mahindra 58 points behind Porsche. McLaren is fourth, nine points behind Mahindra.
Formula E will now head to Shanghai for another double-header on May 31 and June 1.
2025 Tokyo E-Prix, Round 8 results
2025 Tokyo E-Prix, Round 9 results
Dinshaw Magol
